Charita M. Goshay: Time for us to start behaving like 8-year-olds

Wednesday

Oct 19, 2016 at 6:25 AM

Commentary: When the children in my life turn about 8 years old, I stop letting them win all the time at board games, sports and air hockey. Especially air hockey.Why? Because at 8 you are old enough to learn that, for all your cuteness, there are many times in life in which you will lose.

By Charita M. Goshay Repository staff writer

When the children in my life turn about 8 years old, I stop letting them win all the time at board games, sports and air hockey. Especially air hockey.

Why? Because at 8 you are old enough to learn that, for all your cuteness, there are many times in life in which you will lose. There will be moments when you fumble at the goal line and whiff with the bases loaded.

You will land on Boardwalk when it belongs to someone else.

But you will live to play another day.

I want them to learn that if they keep at it, they'll get better. Usually, by the time they're 12, they give me a real run for the money. By then they know their victories are earned, not given.

Learning how to lose isn't easy, and it's never fun. But it's a necessity. When children start to grasp the concept of competition so much so that they'll do anything to win, you have to bite your lip to keep from laughing because you don't want to encourage it.

Some of us, however, never grow out of it.

Transition of power

In the waning days of this presidential election, as one candidate suddenly finds himself dog-paddling, his accusations that the election process is rigged are growing louder by the day.

There's a fraud going on, all right. A person with no experience in governing or public service has convinced millions of people that he can handle the world's hardest government job and that if he doesn't get it, he was cheated out of it.

When you're 7, maybe. When you're 70? Really?

Here's the thing: Donald Trump brilliantly has tapped into the angst, anger and powerlessness so many Americans are feeling — people who have been stalked by economic losses and setbacks for 30 years, people who are being told they're bigoted and wrong for having concerns about some of the social changes they're seeing. Yet Trump kneecaps his own winning message by veering off course to throw kitchen sinks at every criticism.

What makes America exceptional is that from our very beginning we have embraced the peaceful transition of power. Even when the result is controversial, as were the cases of Tilden-Hayes in 1876, Dewey-Truman in 1948, Nixon-Kennedy in 1960 and Bush-Gore in 2000, Americans have understood that as a nation of laws, violence is not the acceptable response.

That's no longer a guarantee. According to a Wall Street Journal report from a recent political rally in Cincinnati, you had 50-year-olds offering quotes such as this: "If (Clinton) is in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That's how I feel about it."

Over the weekend, a GOP office in North Carolina was fire-bombed and graffitied with references to Nazism. Democrats there have raised $13,000 to help rebuild it, understanding that when such violent crimes occur, no one wins.

Salting the ground

Let's be clear: Accusations of a rigged process are false. According to research done by the University of Arizona's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, of the hundreds of millions of votes cast in recent elections, about three dozen were found to be fraudulent.

You have a better chance of being struck by lightning while hitting a hole-in-one.

Plus, given that 31 of 50 secretaries of state are Republican, the charge doesn't even make sense. Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, a Republican and Trump supporter, certainly rejects it, telling CNN: "There's just no justification for concern about widespread voter fraud."

The notion that there can be no other explanation for a Trump loss except for cheating runs so deep that the campaign recently cut ties with Ohio GOP Chair Matt Borges, who probably will need therapy when all is said and done. But Ohio still matters.

Deliberate disinformation about our election process cannot be allowed to salt the ground. The outcome cannot be usurped by the aggrieved. The loser, whoever he or she might be, needs to behave like an 8-year-old and deal with it.